"either-or" in Chinook; how to say "envelope"

[David Robertson]

Here's some great syntax, er, neat Chinook stuff.

A letter from a Salmon Arm man that I presented a couple of Chinook 
Gatherings back uses the phrasing "...kata [klaska] spus tlus spus 
klahawiam."  At the time, the lack of punctuation threw me into thinking he 
was saying one thing, but experience with more letters from the Interior 
shows me he meant something else.

He meant "...how [they] are getting along: well or miserably."  

I've found that people who relied on Jargon for routine communication 
formulated "either-or" choices as "(s)pus X (s)pus Y," "either/whether X or 
Y."  Nice to know.  I don't recall seeing that in anyone's thumbnail 
sketches of Jargon grammar, but I could be forgetful.

A second lightbulb turned on over my head when I was re-examining a 
different part of the same letter.  There, the writer talks about a letter 
he got from another Native person, who he names.  Then he says 
literally, "But I don't have his name in/on the bag" ("nim kopa lisak"), 
and asks for help with this so that he can send a letter in reply.  I'd 
originally read all this metaphorically, which as you know can lead to big 
misunderstandings.  Did he mean "it's on the tip of my tongue"?  Or "I'm 
not sure of it"?  Etc...  Well, it now strikes me he could've meant "I 
don't have his address."

Well, as they often wrote in these letters, "pus ikta maika tomtom?"  
[sic]  "What do you think?"

--Dave R

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